Life Update August 2018

Aside from my Montréal Travel Diary that I posted back in March, my blog and social media have been all but abandoned for the past couple of months, and I wanted to dedicate a post to updating you all about my life.

I applied to graduate school back in February, and at the end of March I received my acceptance letter to the University of British Columbia’s Masters of Science in Speech-Language Pathology program. I am really excited for this new chapter of my life, but it means I’ll be moving to Vancouver and leaving my hometown behind, which scares me when I think about it too much.

At the same time I received this news, my grandmother’s health was rapidly declining and she was admitted to the hospital on Easter Monday. My mother and I visited her everyday and held her hands as she died six days later. My grandmother was, and still is, one of the strongest and kindest women I know and I can only hope that I become half the woman she was.

A week later, I flew out to Calgary, needing to get away from everything for a little while. And who do you think I saw there? If you guessed Scavenger Hunt Boy who I met in Montréal, you’d be right. His name is Mike, by the way. I spent eight days with him in his hometown of Calgary, exploring all the tourist spots and even venturing to Banff and Lake Louise. Mike is the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel to me, and makes me happier than I thought I deserved to be. I met him when I was at my lowest following a devastating heartbreak, and he has shown me only kindness and patience as I process it and move on. If heartbreak was the price of meeting him, I would pay it ten times over.

Once I got back, I started full-time work at my summer job, and that has taken up the vast majority of my time.

At the end of June, I graduated university with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a Minor in Linguistics, and immediately started planning out grad school in Vancouver. Real-estate is brutal as it is, and finding somewhere to live in Vancouver is near-impossible. I ended up finding an apartment and moved in at the end of July (stay tuned for an apartment tour post).

Then in August, I attended the North American Parkour Championships with Mike, and even learned a little bit of Parkour myself. The biggest takeaways from that weekend were that 1) I have a lot more muscles in my body than I ever felt before, 2) everyone who practices Parkour (called traceurs) has insanely sculpted abs, and 3) there really needs to be an online resource for people whose significant others do Parkour, something like “So, Your Boyfriend Does Parkour – Now What?” This is still a work-in-progress title though, because there are so many amazingly talented female traceurs and the resource would also be for male partners looking to understand the practice a little better. While I don’t think I’ll ever be NAPC-level, I think it could be fun to try out some Parkour sometime. After all, I have the perfect teacher.

In recent months, I have also gotten much more into bullet journaling, and instead of crowding up my instagram feed with journal spreads, I decided to create a new account @literaryandlovelydoodles for all of my bullet journaling and art, so you can follow me over there if you’d like 🙂 🙂

Finally, In 7 days and counting, I will start grad school and I am simultaneously excited and nervous. This is an incredible new chapter of my life, but it means leaving the old ones behind, and I have never been very good at letting go. With this new chapter beginning, I want to keep up with blogging. I’ve never been very good at sticking to one topic though, so bear with me as my content goes from beauty product hauls and reviews, to book hauls and reviews, to fashion lookbooks, to bullet journal spreads, to university life, to wherever else I decide to take it. When life gives you choices, I like to select e) all of the above (I am aware I already have 5 options listed above but the phrase doesn’t work with selecting f – just go with me on this one).

So here’s to a (hopefully) great academic year and a fresh start on this blog. Whether you have been with me since yesterday or since the very beginning, thank you for your love and support. It means the world to me. Sorry again for my absence, but I promise I am back for good this time.